


canis major

by orien



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, F/M, Quite a lot of angst actually, sorry - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-04
Updated: 2015-08-04
Packaged: 2018-04-12 23:35:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4499052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orien/pseuds/orien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When she hears his voice it’s as though she lets go of a breath she didn’t know she was holding, but he sounds different and aged, like nothing she’d ever heard before. For a moment she just breathes, it’s impossible to find words – how funny that she’d been planning every day for 24 months exactly what she’d say to him if she had the chance. <em>How could you do this to me? Every day for two years, every single day I waited, but you never came. You broke my heart and I will never forgive you.</em></p>
            </blockquote>





	canis major

_I ran away in floods of shame_  
_I’ll never tell how close I came_  
_As I crossed the Holland Road_  
_Well you went left and I went right_  
_As the moon hung proud and bright_  
_You would have loved it here tonight_

She’s not sure when the days started to stretch into weeks, or when summer turned into autumn, (but she could tell by the way the leaves turned orange and fell to the ground, and how the new chill in the air left goose-bumps on her skin.) She’s not sure when she stopped watching her favourite TV shows, when she had to start practicing how to feign a smile, or when she stopped looking out the window, but what she can tell you is that she knows the exact moment he left.

It had all been inevitable from the beginning, really. The whole idea. She’d been kidding herself to believe they could carry on. Flying around in a blue box seeing whole worlds and galaxies and stars, with her numbered days in this tiny infinity. But when she sat with her legs dangling out that ridiculous thing, the reflection of the stars like little fireflies in her eyes, and his fingers laced between hers, it had seemed entirely impossible that this would ever end, and that they would in fact spend forever this way. The truth was suffocating, and suddenly this tiny little Earth felt so very big, even in comparison to everything she had seen, gazed upon with childlike wonder, and she felt alone. 

-

It hadn’t been planned, she hadn’t premeditated it, but it had happened all the same. Not fate, not destiny; their stars weren’t crossed and she wasn’t about to believe that in some alternate universe, she was _his_ Clara. But the way the light cast planes across his face and how his hair swept across his forehead that night in the TARDIS, and the way she felt right there in that moment – she met his lips with bruising force and the Doctor did nothing to stop her. It had been ridiculous, utterly ridiculous. Stupid little Clara. His hands were hesitant but she was eager, guided him to the right places, moaned into his mouth, painted him every colour she could think of with the electricity of her touch. It had been desperate, as though she needed nothing more in that moment but to feel him.

“You know – I – I don’t make a habit of-” he’d stuttered, faltering as his hands ghosted between her thighs. 

“I know.”

His weight had been delicious on top of her, marvelous buried inside her, and she had watched him with the same wonder as he came apart that she would a dying star.

It should have been obvious from his silence as he buttoned up his trousers, the way he didn’t look at her sat there on the floor near the console as she tugged her tights up. “Say something, chin boy.” 

Perhaps a part of her knew but the reality was far worse than anything she could have ever imagined, and when she slept she dreamed of the man with the bow tie, who asked her to come away with him. Somehow those dreams always became nightmares. 

“It’s time to take you home, Clara.”

He’d explained to her before how some left, some died. Somehow, he never mentioned anyone being left behind. 

-

One evening as they had floated past Canis Major, after the Doctor pointed out Sirius, the brightest, most brilliant star in the sky (found in the constellation of stars that made up Orion’s hunting dog), he had cast her a sideways glance and smiled.

“Clara Oswald, you are by far the most wonderful thing I can imagine.”

“Even more wonderful than the Carina Nebula?” 

“Far more wonderful than the Carina Nebula.”

“Well then, what about Sirius?”

“Much more. The most wonderful thing in the whole, entire universe.”

“You are ridiculous.” 

Little Clara Oswald, the most wonderful thing in the whole, entire universe. She thought she’d never hear anything like that again until the day the phone call came.

When she hears his voice it’s as though she lets go of a breath she didn’t know she had been holding, but he sounds different and aged, like nothing she’d ever heard before. For a moment she just breathes, it’s impossible to find words – how funny that she’d been planning every day for 24 months exactly what she’d say to him if she had the chance. _How could you do this to me? Every day for two years, every single day I waited, but you never came. You broke my heart and I will never forgive you._

“Clara? My Clara?” She falls apart because god, it’s been two years of nothing, no word at all, almost like he’d never existed. “Clara, I’m so sorry…” 

She cries down the phone and the Doctor bites his lip on the other line, calling somewhere from god knows when in the future, and his knuckles turn white as he grips the phone, brushes a tired hand through his hair. 

“You’re coming back for me, aren’t you? You’re coming back now, this was just a horrible joke you played on me.” 

The Doctor swallows hard. “I’m not coming back, Clara.” It is silent for a long moment, and little Clara can see nothing past her tears. “I wanted to explain everything to you, but I don’t have long.” 

The air is tight in her lungs and she squeezes her eyes shut, sinks down the wall until she is on her knees, and nothing hurts more in the whole entire universe than this here right now – there is a giant cavity in her chest, and she is falling so hard, tumbling into a great giant abyss and there is not a single thing that has ever existed that could possibly mend her.

He told her how he had made a mistake; he had known the pain to love and lose, he had seen worlds crumble, he had seen Gallifrey in ruins. He had lived too long and knew too much, and now he was saying goodbye, “goodbye my Clara, my impossible girl.” 

And she thinks, as the line goes dead, that he had been right, as he always was: Everything ends.


End file.
